Another Fate
by SimplexityJane
Summary: It's Allison who kills Kate. Allison, not Dad, not the second-in-command Beta who was in line for the power.


**Inspired by this post on Tumblr: shutuphardison . tumblr /post / 37011018072** (Remove spaces, add .com ) I hate the formatting on this site.

* * *

It's Allison who kills Kate.

Allison, not Dad, not the second-in-command Beta who was in line for the power. Not Mom either, who married into the family and is probably just as powerful as Kate. Not Grandpa, who gave the power up willingly enough but always let everyone know how he felt about Kate's ability- or lack thereof. Killing another family, even a hunting family, was the worst thing she could have done. There were kids in the fire. Kids who might have been turned.

Great-grandma was a Hale, and eventually the Alpha of the Argents. Allison is seventeen, feels the weight of eleven people on her family- her pack's- shoulders, and knows that while the Hales were reclusive enough among the hunting community that when their house burned down no one mourned them, knowing that it was a werewolf- and that her pack didn't take her down immediately- would force them to act. She doesn't think, just acts, ripping Kate's throat out even as Stiles begs her to reconsider. Let him try the cure Derek found.

Her eyes bleed red.

* * *

"It had to be done," she tells Danny when he accosts her. He's been so good with them, him and his family welcomed them back to Beacon Hills like they'd never left. He's helping her bury Kate and Peter Hale- Peter who'd faked being half dead and charmed a nurse, then somehow gotten to the old Hale house, only to be shot by Kate. There are bullet holes in the banister. It used to be a nice house. She remembers being eight, coming here with Mom to negotiate treaties. Mrs. Hale gave her cookies. She said the reason there were hunters was because sometimes werewolves were evil, and you couldn't kill your own kind. Not unless they'd broken the laws that your kind held, and pack was above, concrete, outside of those laws. "Derek needed to know we weren't going to cover up her crimes. Pups- kids, they're really important." She's shaking. Not with sorrow (even though she thinks she should be), but because this is so much power. Danny's pulse point is the thing that brings her back, strangely enough.

"What's wrong, Allison?" he asked, and she closed her eyes. Felt the room around her, the heat of Danny (who was only here for Stiles, just like Scott even though Scott was her mate why did he have to think she was a monster why why why was his father a hunter), the pull of the moon. Her eyes were red when she opened them, but his were calm. "Okay," he said. "Okay."

She bites him and feels Lydia's connection to the pack finally solidify. God, she'd been afraid Lydia wouldn't get through when she heard about it. He heals quickly, the first Beta turned by a new Alpha, and the power resettles.

"It was either that or sex, right?" he asks, and she blushes, nodding. "Well, I don't think that would have worked. Come on."

Hunters bury their dead with broken weapons. Peter had a set of knives, steel breaking easier than the gun, and a sword. By the time everything is done she feels sick. Derek Hale meets her eyes with a sort of challenge and she shrugs, wishing Scott was here instead of Derek.

* * *

Lydia has blue eyes, the sort of rarity that doesn't come easily with bitten Betas. She looks at Allison and the claw marks that don't exist anymore and says, "Really? This is the big secret? Jackson's going to be irritated. He had sixty bucks on a cult."

Of course Lydia and Jackson bet on them. Lydia approached her when she nearly lost her temper during Economics over a stupid, asthmatic _human_ who was infuriatingly adorable. Lydia likes the danger that comes from being a werewolf. Lydia... wants to tell Jackson. Of course.

"No," Allison says, thinking that Dad wants her home at a reasonable hour so they can discuss this whole situation and that Jackson would probably turn into a giant rage monster if he were turned. Which he probably will be, because having a human for a mate is stupid. Even a human like Jackson. "It's a secret, Lydia."

"He's my- well, ex-boyfriend, I suppose. Wait, is this why he wanted to be around Derek? He wants to be some sort of hunter?"

That does make things complicated, though the fact that Lydia figured out hunters in under a minute without explanation is pretty awesome, even if Kate was insane turning a teenager.

"I doubt it. He wants to be powerful, that's all. Werewolves are better than hunters like that." Her eyes flash, not on purpose, but Lydia's flash back and then they're giggling like children.

"Okay, but I do want to tell him, you get that? He- he feels different." Lydia looked as if she'd swallowed a lemon. "We don't have _mates_ do we? Am I predetermined to fall in love with Jackson Whittemore and make babies with him? Because I object to that." That's hysteria, and her fangs come out. The machines are beeping and nurses will be in here soon, so she makes the eyes more powerful, uses her influence in that instinctive way she'd heard of before, talking to Kate (who'd hinted that she was going to give the power to her, not Dad, even though Dad should have been Alpha anyway, Grandpa gave Kate the power because he was sentimental and her birth father had been the eldest, Kate the one who had the same viciousness. Allison is grateful she apparently takes after Mom.).

"Yes, but you already loved him," Allison says. "Stop frowning and accept the love, Lydia. You're one of a select few people who know they'll work out with their significant other."

* * *

She visits Stiles, surprised that he's alone. She taps on the window and perches on the tree outside like some stereotype. He obviously knows she's there. She waits until he gives in to the inevitable (read: stops fidgeting and opens the damn thing) then crawls through, nodding at him.

"My dad's calling in an anonymous tip. The image of the necklace that got released strongly resembles Kate's favorite accessory, so they'll take the search off Derek. Things will fall into place, I promise, and we- Mom- got Peter's nurse and convinced her that she'd helped him go after her. She'll end up in jail." She meets his eyes, watching them flash gold for a moment as he takes that in. They're taking a woman who was manipulated by a hunter and sending her off as a scapegoat, and Allison can't feel regret. She was the reason Peter was able to kill so many humans, as guilty as they might have been. She was implicitly, if not explicitly, involved in actual murder.

"Okay," he says. "Scott figured out the mate thing. By the way." When she nods, not sure how to continue, he asks, "Would it have worked?"

Stiles almost killed his best friend. He almost assaulted his then-boyfriend. He's felt things break inside him that she can't understand because she and the wolf are one being. Werewolf. Man-wolf. Wolf and man, neither greater.

He's not like that.

"No," she says. "There are myths about it, there are legends, but we have better memories than humans." A press of claws to the back of her neck, the scent Great grandma always gave off, contentment and love with steel behind it, and she knew about the Wolf Queen, the deal with the witch, the first pack war. Legends and memories delicately chosen and given to a ten-year-old before her Alpha passed on, things Grandpa had never said and Kate never thought of. "We made deals so priests wouldn't be able to take half our soul. Witches, different shamans. Once a full moon has passed you and the wolf are the same."

He growls, because he is nothing if not literal.

"It's true. Nothing in you is there that wouldn't already be. And if you can accept that, you need a pack. Omegas are outcasts. They get killed by hunters."

"My best friend's a hunter." He looked up and smiled, but it wasn't friendly or happy. "I guess that's good for the pack, though." She feels the bond suddenly solid, a line of heat through her chest that leaves her gasping and Stiles clutching his chest. A full pack. Three Betas and an Alpha, even if there are other branches. "Oh," he says.

"Go to sleep, Stiles."

* * *

Scott's father wants her dead but she's better than him. Has him pinned and the gun dropped, and she shakes him by the throat, growling sharply.

"I will not fight you," she says through gritted teeth. "If you come after my pack I will kill you." Scott's hand is at her arm and she snaps because she thought he'd wanted to reconcile, she thought that maybe they'd be okay.

"Allison, I didn't know!" he says. "Allison, you can't kill him." _Allison Allison Allison_. She lets his father go and turns to him.

"You swear?" she asks, and he nods. She wants to kiss him but she just slumps, knowing it wouldn't be accepted. "Get him help. Your mom's a nurse, she can probably deal with him."

He doesn't call for her.

* * *

"It's okay," Dad says even though he can't possibly know that. There used to be so many Argent werewolves. Now Grandpa has cancer (the rarest death for werewolves, and the worst, one coming from his own war when he was a kid and inhaled wolfsbane fumes), her aunt is dead, and there are six of them left that count, including her mother. They have allies in the werewolf community but no one crosses the Alpha pack. They don't usually form for people like them. Not respectable packs.

There are five of them coming to the house to 'pay their respects' to the new Alpha. She's younger than every one of them, even the twins who murdered their entire family.

Watchdogs. That's what Grandpa called them, but they act like bloodhounds. Derek ends up at the house as a show of support, Scott too, so there are eight of them. Two of them are humans who couldn't move fast enough to defend themselves.

It's not an imposing picture, but Deucalion nods his head and as Kali, Ian, Aiden, and Ennis walk through the door they continue the ritual.

"Understand, this is a formality," they say. Ian is looking at Lydia like he wants her, but Lydia isn't even paying attention. Something about it makes Allison think that she'd probably have no problem taking him out, even if it meant forced independence. "You have a stable pack, alliances with other packs and even the local hunters-" He nods at Scott and Derek without looking at them, dismissing them even though he has to smell the claim she has over Scott, the strangeness that follows Derek like it attached itself onto the cloud of despair. "We just need to make sure your power doesn't make you foolish. Have a good day, Argent."

They're gone as fast as they came, but Allison doesn't let herself breathe. The first thing she does is rub herself over Lydia, knowing they both need it. Mom and Dad are already attached (they're not even mates, not really, but they make it work), Danny and Stiles sniffing around each other like they might need to reaffirm the pack bonds but don't want to touch each other when they ended on such bad terms. She ignores them and kisses Scott, deep, forgetting that they're not dating at the moment, only knowing that he needs to be covered in her scent, that no one should have a doubt as to whom he belongs. He returns it, thankfully, but Dad clears his throat before they get too close to actually having sex in the living room. Derek doesn't get kissed, but she does run a hand through his hair, perfunctory.

Stiles and Danny only allow themselves together when she's in the middle, practically snapping over her head. She gets them in line with bared teeth at their throats.

"Okay," they say, and Lydia ends up with them, which is good. "Okay."

They can do this. They can do anything.

* * *

The Alpha pack leaves, promising not to return, and Allison breathes easier. Jackson's family goes to New York for the summer and Lydia is belligerent, which leads to the briefest relationship in history with Stiles of all people. At that point Allison lets herself think that everything is going to go to hell, but only for a minute. Stiles and Lydia end up friends of all outcomes that could happen.

(This, she'll later find out, is one of the common factors in all their worlds. Stiles loves Lydia, woos, fails, they become friends after a tense period of hurt. The boy in her living room might not be her Stiles but he really is Stiles, for all his humanity and fragility. He smells like Derek, which is not a development in their world until Stiles is in college, everything and nothing like they ever expected.)

Allison has three kids and all of them are wolves. She sort of insisted on turning Scott when he nearly died one winter because he almost didn't find his inhaler. Lydia and Jackson are living it up, her with her awards and him with his talent, and she hopes pups are on the horizon. Derek and Stiles are getting a year off before she becomes a mother hen, because this pack might be dwindling but there's always hope in the next generation. Danny and his husband already have one on the way.

And she's looking at a younger mirror of herself, angry and lost and a _hunter_. With Stiles and Scott behind her, Scott smelling like a wolf, like rebellion.

She hates alternate realities, she decides, and calls Deaton. He usually knows how to deal with these sorts of things.

(She learns that their reality is much worse, that the Alpha pack came because of Jackson, who did in fact turn into a rage monster, that her mother killed herself for being bitten, that Grandpa was trying to escape death and ended up killing the Alphas and killing other people too. She learns that Scott almost killed Derek, that Derek is an Alpha there, that he and Scott share the town because they have to and that Allison imprisoned and helped torture two of her classmates. She's never heard of Boyd or Erica, but it's been years since high school.

It seems like this reality is a slap in the face to them. She can tell Scott and Allison are mates, that they need each other, but they can't have each other. Politics.

They don't look happy as they disappear. She thinks they don't look happy a lot.)


End file.
